


Give

by Stealth_Noodle



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Bittersweet, Comment Fic, F/M, First Time, Memories, Mid-Canon, Nightmare Imagery, Penis In Vagina Sex, Sad Porn, Weird Coma Dreams, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/pseuds/Stealth_Noodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What time he has is hers, but it isn't his to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle, for the prompts "coma" and "pocket watch."

She comes in drenched and shivering from the storm, uniform plastered to her skin. He's up off the couch in an instant to wrap his coat around her.

"I forgot my umbrella," she says sheepishly. Her blue lips tremble.

"Idiot." He pulls her against his chest, letting the damp seep into his clothes. He can feel her heart fluttering like a tiny bird. "You're gonna catch a cold. C'mon, let's get you warmed up."

It's hard to walk with her clinging to him, but there's no one around to see how ridiculously they lurch. With the convenience of a dream, there's no one else here at all.

_(Of course, because it didn't really happen this way. Dreams are all he has left.)_

Her wet clothes slap against the tile floor as he runs the bath. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her reflection shaking its hair loose over its bare shoulders. He closes his eyes. "Get in. I'm gonna—"

"You can look," she says. Her voice trembles only a little. "Help me in, okay?"

It's the shock of how cold her hand is, he tells himself, that makes him open his eyes. Her skin is still purplish and covered in gooseflesh, and her nipples look painfully stiff. She smiles at him and sets his hand on her back.

"Be careful," he says. She feels too light, too small. She might be shrinking.

She squeezes his hand and replies, "You don't have to worry about me." Trusting her weight to him, she steps into the tub.

The moment her foot touches the water, she bursts into flame. The steam thickens to smoke. The fire licks up her legs, blackening her flesh, and he can't move. His chest constricts as if the suppressants are finally ready to finish snuffing him out. Aki is screaming because he can't get it through his thick skull that there's nothing left to save.

_(Wrong, all wrong. The fire came long before the suppressants. The suppressants make sure that no spark can catch inside him.)_

She's crying alone, outside, because she knows her tears would upset the others. He doesn't ask what she's crying about; if she wanted anyone to know, she wouldn't be out here. Aki's such a crybaby, he goes off every time her lip wobbles.

"C'mon, cut that out," he says instead, and she wipes her nose with the back of her hand as she looks up at him.

He can feel his cheeks warming. Resisting the urge to hide his face, he holds the doll out from behind his back. "I got you something." 

Her eyes light up, because she doesn't know it's stolen.

_(It's so fucked up when he blurs them together.)_

There's nothing he has to offer now but time, and that's stolen, too. It's one of his worst habits. Aki should beat the shit out of him again, drag him to death's door and make him settle up. It's his own fault if she mourns him; it's his own fault for letting her take something he has no right to give.

She tugs him by the hand toward his bed, and he should be digging his heels in or something, but he isn't. He can't even think until she lets go of him. Her eyes keep him pinned in place in absence of her touch.

"Look, I ain't," he begins, then loses his train of thought when she starts to unbutton her blouse. He shakes his head. "I'm just gonna hurt you."

"Don't be like that." Her tone is light and playful, even though her can see her pulse racing in her throat. "I love you, Senpai. I trust you. Come on."

_(This must be real, because it hurts.)_

She takes his hand and guides it, and he watches her torso bloom red as her breaths come harder and faster. Her hips buck rhythmically against him. She's hot and wet around his fingers, like nothing else he's ever felt. The worry that he'll never figure out what to do with the intricate flesh between her thighs quiets a bit when she clutches him and clenches up inside.

Afterward she curls up in his lap, trapping his erection between their bodies. He's been lost for words for a while now, and can't do more than sputter when she explores the head of his cock with her fingertips and curiously slides the foreskin up and down. As her explorations lead her down to his balls, she says, "I wanna be on top."

He forces words around the little strangled noises filling his throat: "D-don't be stupid. Like hell I'm gonna let you risk—"

"Shhh. Of course not." Her finger taps his lips. With a little shifting, she manages to reach over the side of the bed and pick up her jacket. From one of the pockets she produces a condom.

"You planned this," he says accusingly.

She winks as she tears the wrapper open. "I'm the leader. Planning is my _job_."

_(What time he has is hers, but it isn't his to give.)_

The muscles of her thighs tremble as she sinks onto him, lighting his nerves on fire. He groans and digs his fingers into the sheets. Think about something else, he tells himself. Think about halving pills and doubling recipes. Think about the tick-tick-tick of the watch, which he hears counting down and she hears counting up.

Her hips press snugly against his. He opens his eyes to see her staring with surprised delight at the place where they've joined. 

"Look, we fit!" She bounces her hips up and down, rolling his eyes back into his head. "This feels... I don't know. Good-weird. Full. How does it feel for you?"

He grunts.

Her expression falls into concern. "Are you okay? Am I hurting you?"

"Opposite problem," he grits out.

She laughs and rolls her hips with experimental languor. He makes a low strangled noise and tries to keep from coming apart.

The recipe serves twelve but only eight are eating, so reduce four hundred and fifty grams of macaroni to three hundred. Save the dust and slivers from the pill-cutter and scrape together another day. Reduce cooking time— 

"Help me," she whispers urgently, jolting him present. After an uncertain moment, he rolls his thumb in careful circles around her clit.

Her pleased gasp sounds flat and tinny, like an old recording. "Please," she says, louder, frantic, out of sync with her mouth, " _help me_."

The memory crumples up like a piece of paper, and she is alone, battered, bleeding, on her knees before a cocoon of cold light. He is nowhere; he has nothing; there is no time left to steal and no dreams left to sink within; if there is anything left of him at all, it is hers.

_(Somewhere far away, he hears the beeping of a heart monitor.)_

The pocket watch isn't counting up or down, or at all. This matters more than anything in the world, but he can't remember why.

As he rubs his thumb over the dent left by the bullet, the doctor reads off numbers that mean nothing to him. They don't understand why he's alive, but that's not going to stop them from yammering about it. He's restless. The watch is silent. It _matters_.

There's something in the back of his memory, as atrophied as his legs. Something. Someone. All his time is slivers and dust, but she—

He throws his coat on over his hospital gown and runs as fast as his ruined body can carry him.


End file.
